Digital Transformation Policy Scan
Delve into our exploration of the policies that shape government digital transformation across states and territories with our database and visualization tool.
Why Digital Transformation Policy?
Policy shapes the conditions of possibility for how government does its work. Across U.S. states and territories, policy is evolving to shape the digital transformation of government operations and service delivery.
In 2023, the Digital Service Network (DSN) launched a new research agenda to support deeper understanding of three policy tools that influence digital transformation at the state and territorial level — executive orders (EOs), legislation, and administrative rules and guidance.
Our immediate goal? To create accessible resources that document where and how these policies are being enacted to support the work of government practitioners and researchers.
Looking ahead, we aim to understand how governors, policymakers, and public servants define what “good” looks like for government digital transformation and how these policy tools help them achieve success. Our future research will delve into the different policy origins of state-level digital transformation, seeking insights into how policy design influences digital delivery outcomes.
This initiative informs the DSN’s ability to offer robust, evidence-based guidance to promote effective and equitable digital transformation at the state level.
How to Use the Database & Map
Research Questions
Currently, the DSN’s driving question for this research is:
Which types of policy tactics — i.e., EOs, legislation, and administrative rules and guidance — are being used to govern the digital transformation of operations and service delivery across U.S. state and territorial governments?
Answering this first question will enable us to ask deeper questions in future phases of this work, for example:
- In what ways do the identified uses of these policy tactics at the state level define what “good” looks like for the digital transformation of government operations and service delivery?
- How do the people behind the use of tactics — namely governors, policymakers, and public servants — see their chosen tactics as tools to help make these definitions of good a reality?
- How might we define and evaluate the comparative affordances and limitations of various policy tactics to better understand the links between policy design and digital delivery outcomes?
State-level Digital Transformation Policy Scan: Executive Orders
In Fall 2023, the DSN kicked off its digital transformation policy scan by documenting executive orders (EO) enacted since 2013 that shape the digital transformation of government across states and territories. Dive deeper into the EO scan with our database, visualization tool, and summary below. Stay tuned for the DSN’s forthcoming Legislation and Administrative Rules + Guidance scans!
Executive Order Scan: High-Level Takeaways
Some notable, high-level statistics from our EO database include:
-
84%
84% (46/55) states or territories have passed at least one EO related to government digital transformation at some point since 2013. -
20%
“Cybersecurity” and “information technology” are the most common topics of EOs regarding digital transformation (20% and 17%, respectively).
“Broadband” (14%), “website/portal” (10%), and “interoperability” (10%) are the next three most common topics. -
12
There are twelve outlier topics including voting, human services, and infrastructure for which we identified only one EO.
Five EOs of Interest to the DSN
Pennsylvania
PA’s EO 2023-08, enacted in 2023 by Governor Josh Shapiro, established the Commonwealth Office of Digital Experience (CODE PA) to improve, streamline, and continuously adapt the Commonwealth’s digital services so that interactions between users and Commonwealth entities are simple, seamless, and secure. Read the EO
Ohio
OH’s EO 2019-15D, enacted in 2019 by Governor Mike DeWine, aimed to modernize information technology systems in state agencies via Innovate Ohio in order to provide a common digital platform and definitive digital identity for state agencies/programs, and to facilitate data-sharing across agencies and programs to better serve the public. Read the EO
Washington
WA” EO 19-04, enacted in 2019 by Governor Jay Inslee, issued a directive to the One Washington Program, which was implemented to promote the modernization of state administrative business and systems, to (among other things), establish program governance, deliver business transformation, modernize technology, and provide organizational change management support. Read the EO
Vermont
VT’s EO 03-17, enacted in 2017 by Governor Phil Scott, created the Governor’s Government Modernization and Efficiency Team as a dedicated team of state operational professionals and private sector business and technology leaders to support successful implementation of modernization change efforts in the state. Read the EO
Rhode Island
RI’s EO 13-01, enacted in 2013 by Governor Lincoln Chafee, established the Governor’s Transparency and Accountability Initiative to (among other things) ensure state agencies post a greater breadth of information online and make such information easier to find. Read the EO
The DSN views EOs like these as warranting deeper analysis because they deal with digital transformation in a generalized way, offering a broad — as opposed to highly targeted — executive mandate to pursue cross-cutting administrative activities which shape the digital transformation of operations and service delivery.
Further, by naming goals like “simplicity” and “seamlessness”, or by recognizing the importance of value and efficacy for users of government services, a number of these more generalized EOs embrace key values and practices that the DSN views as likely enablers of equitable and effective digital transformation.
Executive Order Scan: Database + Dashboard
You can explore our EO database to glean your own insights and takeaways.
To build this database, we used a tailored keyword list derived from academic and practitioner insights to locate relevant EOs enacted since 2013. Find more details on our data collection protocol in the appendix below.
We identified 134 EOs related to government digital transformation using this approach. These EOs are compiled in a database hosted in Airtable. You can use this database to:
- Group or filter EOs by various fields, like state/territory, year enacted, or topic tag
- Read short summaries of EOs
- Download full-text PDFs of EOs
We also built a dashboard where you can explore these data geographically. You can use this dashboard to:
- Filter EOs by topic tag
- View your results on a map
- Open more details about selected EOs in a new browser tab
Connect with the DSN on our Policy Scan
Please stay tuned as we release more data, visualization tools, and analysis as part of this policy scan.
In the meantime, we look forward to seeing how you engage with our EO scan:
- Is there an EO you think is missing?
- Do you have a use case for these data that you want to share with us?
- Are you interested in guidance or support on pursuing executive action in your own state to equitably and effectively shape digital transformation?
- Anything else you’d like to share or connect on?
Reach out at digitalservicenetwork@georgetown.edu. We look forward to hearing from you.
How to Cite the DSN’s Policy Scan
The DSN’s State-level Digital Transformation Policy Scan data is licensed as Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International.
You are free to:
Share – copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
Adapt – remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially
Under the following terms:
Attribution – You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the Beeck Center or the DSN endorses you or your use.
We recommend crediting our work in the following way:
State-level Digital Transformation Policy Scan © 2023 by The Digital Service Network at Georgetown University’s Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation, CC BY 4.0.
